


Dracula Meets The Mommy

by Fabrisse



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-02-20
Updated: 2001-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:06:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Dracula get into the Summers house?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dracula Meets The Mommy

**Author's Note:**

> [ ] indicates Joyce interior monologue

The old song was right, it never rained in California. Joyce Summers stood at the door to the gallery and looked around. Today was certainly not the typical bright, sunny tourist postcard type of day. Maybe in Monterey or San Francisco they were used to thick fog, but Sunnydale?

Still it had been a productive day for Joyce, she and her assistant had packed up the last show. Nearly two thirds of the works had sold and the gallery had made a tidy little profit. And this afternoon they'd put up Joyce's dream show. Three local artists all with different views of Sunnydale.

Joyce went back in and checked the clock again. She had nearly fifteen minutes until closing time and nothing left to do. The bell rang as the door opened. For a moment Joyce could see nothing there, then as if the mist had coalesced, [Joyce, you're delusional he must have just walked through a thicker patch of fog. Right on your doorstep] a young man stood in the doorway.

The gentleman in question was probably around thirty and a bit overdressed, but Joyce found herself warming to him as he walked around the gallery looking at the works. So many people came in and glanced around or tried to start a conversation about "art" with a capital A and never really looked at the things she offered, the things that she loved. This young gentleman [He's quite aristocratic somehow and attractive in spite of the pallor. Must be his eyes or his full red lips. Oh my.] *really* looked.

Right now he was admiring the photographs that Jane E. was doing. All of them were of Sunnydale, but the angles were odd or some small piece of carving caught at just the right time of day was the focus so that the larger context of the piece was blurry. Overexposure, silver and albumen development added to the strangeness inherent in emphases. It gave these works an eeriness appropriate to the town's death rate.

The oddest of all though were the ones taken during the freak snow storm two Christmases ago. All the cues from the architechture, the plants, and the store names said "Southern California", but large white flakes and a light dusting gave them a reflexive quality.

The gentleman signalled to her to come over. "This one," he had a slight accent that intrigued her. She followed where his finger was pointing. It was one of her favorites a blurry snowball fight captured in crisp black and white under the marquis of the Sunnydale cinema showing "It's a Wonderful Life."

"Are you interested in the history of the picture or would you care to know more about the artist?" Joyce had learned that the first questions were never about price, they were like a first date.

"No. I want to purchase it. There's an irony to it that calls to me like the distant music of wolves."

Unless of course it was love at first sight. In which case the buyer wanted it NOW. "It's $300. I know that seems a lot for a photograph, but Jane E. only makes 3 copies of each print and then destroys the negative."

"Yes, I will have it. And that one too." He was pointing to the far wall. Joyce hadn't seen him so much as glance in that direction, but once again he had selected the piece that Joyce considered the artist's best. Walt David Green was a surrealist. The town was Sunnydale; the time was always just before dawn. The paintings were of various landmarks in the town; the colors included that clear green the sky sometimes takes in twilight. And always, somewhere, there was a trickle of red. It could be at a neck or a mouth or trickling in the gutter. Sometimes you'd stare at one of his pictures for hours and think, it's not there. But the next time you looked it would flash out at you like a wound. Occasionally a small blonde woman with a very determined face would appear in the picture and somehow you knew she could make the red go away. Perhaps she was an angel; maybe she was death. Joyce always thought of her as Buffy. And in this particular picture, she appeared alone, staring directly at the viewer and holding up a cross. It was an exquisite work; the gentleman had taste.

"I'm afraid that painting is very expensive. $5000. But there are some..."

"That is not too dear for a piece of such beauty. I understand that you will want to keep them in the shop for others to view, but perhaps you'd let me pay for them now." Joyce's eyes widened and she nodded. Young, attractive, and rich, why couldn't Buffy meet a young man like him. With all that going for him though, he probably wouldn't want someone as rough and tumble as a vampire slayer.

His card went through, the signatures matched and it was time for Joyce to go home. For all the gloom and fog this had turned into a very good day.

"Perhaps you would permit me..." "Joyce" "Joyce, to take you out to dinner and you can tell me about the artists and their works. You obviously love them."

Joyce found herself as flustered as a school girl under his steady gaze. "I'm sorry, but tonight I have to get home to fix dinner for my daughter." Joyce took her courage in both hands, "but afterward, maybe we could meet for a drink at 9:30 or so?"

"I never drink ... wine."

"Maybe coffee. The coffeehouse up the street..." Joyce trailed off as she remembered that tonight was open mike night. She'd seen Mr. Giles performing there once and had spent days remembering the uses to which the hood of a car could be put. "Or, if you wouldn't think it too forward of me, I live not far from here." Had she not been looking toward her shoes, Joyce might have noticed the small flash of triumph in the young gentleman's eyes.

"What a charming suggestion." He smiled at her. "I'm new to this country and have yet to be invited into an American home."

Joyce wrote down the address and gave him some bare directions. "This is so embarrassing. I don't even know your name."

The gentleman's smile reached his eyes this time. Tonight would be most entertaining, and, quite frankly, even dreamy virgins in filmy negligees could pall after a couple of centuries. "Please, call me Vlad."


End file.
